DIS­GRACED

Mel­bourne Theatre Com­pany, Au­gust 19-Oc­to­ber 1

Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer-win­ning play gets its sec­ond Aus­tralian pro­duc­tion of the year, star­ring Hazem Sham­mas as Amir, a suc­cess­ful New York lawyer who’s on a part­ner­ship track, if his back­ground can just stay in the back­ground. His col­league Jory (Zindzi Okenyo) is mar­ried to art dealer Isaac (Mitchell Bu­tel), whom Amir’s artist wife Emily (Kat Ste­wart) needs to im­press, so a din­ner party is in order. But it’s not long be­fore the ve­neer of ci­vil­ity be­gins to peel.